Spanning 400 years of American history, THE MUSIC OF AMERICA: HISTORY THROUGH MUSICAL TRADITIONS, a six-hour 3-part documentary television series, explores the evolution of American culture by examining the people's songs. Nut Hill Productions, Inc. has partnered with flagship Washington, D.C. PBS station, WETA (Dalton Delan, Executive Producer, Karen Kenton, Executive Producer) to bring this extensive story to television.
Handed down, generation-to-generation, blended across socio-economic lines and ethnicities, "traditional" or "folk" music has created a new American vernacular expression to help societies rejoice, mourn, cope with and process their lives in a rapidly changing world.
Nut Hill Productions, Inc., a non-profit media organization based in San Francisco is the lifeblood behind this ambitious project, as its principals, Deborah Robins (Executive Producer, and Peter Ashlock, Co-Executive Producer) seek to bring a new understanding and tenderness towards a vast collection of musical styles and expressions.
"Most people don't understand that folk music stems from homemade experiences, an expression of life's conditions," Robins explains, "and not from the Folk Music Revival of the late 1950s and early '60s. Commercially successful music during that time was only a blip on the radar when considering the four century continuum we're looking at."
"Music remains one of the most natural means of expression for the many different cultures and peoples that call America home," says Sharon Percy Rockefeller, President and CEO of WETA.
"In a sense a project of this magnitude has never been done this way before -- we're researching centuries of the everyday music of the American people, and putting it into the context of history and social anthropology," says Peter Ashlock, Co-Executive Producer, Nut Hill Productions, Inc.
"This series analyzes the points where history, music, and culture intersect by following several families from their arrival in North America to their modern day descendants," says the award winning Series Producer, Leo Eaton, (America at a Crossroads).
Every era in American history has found a voice that expresses concerns about vital issues and communicates them on a grassroots, yet very potent level. Whether rising up in sorrow or singing out in joy, songs reflect the work, the relationships, the family, the institutions, the organizations, the times, the flow of life ... the pulse of a nation. From Africa, the British Isles, Spain, Germany, France and elsewhere, everyday people have been coming together in the United States creating new ways of musical expression developing out of their old traditions and cultures.
Segment Directors are Leslie Farrell (African American Lives), Hector Galan, (Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement), and Peter Frumkin (American Masters). Series Music Producer for Nut Hill Productions, Inc., is recording industry veteran Mark Leviton.
THE MUSIC OF AMERICA: HISTORY THROUGH MUSICAL TRADITIONS will make extensive use of existing film and photo archives along with, paintings, newspapers, visual material and ephemera from appropriate periods of American history, in addition to exclusive interviews. Filming locations will be in USA, Africa, and Europe over the next few years.
The HD TV documentary series will be broadcast on PBS accompanied by a comprehensive package of educational, outreach and archived materials by Web, DVD and print media. For information about Nut Hill Productions, Inc. please go to www.themusicofamerica.org.
Media: please contact Cash Edwards,Music Services at CashEdwards.com for interviews or more information.
Mission Statement: Nut Hill Productions, Inc. is a non-profit media company founded in 1999 to produce television and educational films to help Americans better understand the cultural context of the world in which we live.